The Power of the Heart: Finding Your True Purpose in Life (14 page)

Instead of looking outward to create external power, to manipulate or to control others, you look inward to see the internal origins of your experiences.

You can do this by focusing on what happens in your body when a negative emotion crops up, with a technique called Emotional Awareness.

 LINDA FRANCIS

I’ve got great news for you. Every emotion that you have, every single emotion that you have, is a message from your soul. That is exciting.
It’s powerful to know that because if you know that, then you’ll pay attention. You would want to pay attention to a message from your soul. I know you would.

Each and every emotion is like a spontaneous text message from your inner source. It is important not to delete these texts from the soul, but to notice, register, and absorb them. Your heart is the cell phone that receives your soul’s text messages. With an open heart, you can face up to fears and nourish loving emotions.

 DEAN SHROCK

Our emotions actually function like a guidance system to let us know when we are resonating with our core essence and love. And so, honestly, by simply paying attention to how you feel, you can know whether or not you’re doing what is honestly right for you, what works for you.

Your emotions will let you know right away whether you are on the right track in aligning your personality and life with your soul.

 ISABEL ALLENDE

How do I know if something is good for me or good for the world? It’s my body that tells me how I feel it, and I think that the heart is the center of that.

 LINDA FRANCIS

Emotional awareness is a tool that I use to create Authentic Power, to grow spiritually. And it is a way that I am able to detect in myself, physically, energy centers in my body. I check inside all the time. I notice what’s happening physically, the sensations that are going on in my throat area or my heart or my solar plexus and in other energy centers. So I can tell whether I have fear-based parts of my personality or love-based parts of my personality active.

Your body constantly reflects your emotional state. Notice the ways that your emotions reveal themselves physically. Make a habit of asking yourself why, in a certain state of mind, you feel something in your body. Consider whether it feels good to you, or not. There is a reason stress makes you uncomfortable and positive emotions produce happiness.

 GARY ZUKAV

Emotional awareness doesn’t just mean the ability to say, “I’m angry or I’m sad, or I’m happy.” No, it’s more precise and grounded and much more accurate than that. It means being able to look inside your body at specific areas, for example your throat area, your chest area, and your solar plexus area, and others as well, and see what physical sensations you can detect there.

If there are uncomfortable sensations or painful sensations, then you know that a frightened part of your personality is active. That means a part of your personality that comes from fear and the behaviors of that part of your personality will be things like anger, jealousy, resentment, feeling superior and entitled, feeling inferior and needing to please.

And once you know that, you know that acting in love will create constructive and beneficial experiences for you, and good-feeling experiences for you. And acting in fear will create painful and destructive experiences for you. It’s a matter of emotional awareness and responsible choice.

With love, clarity, wisdom, you create Authentic Power. With Authentic Power, you can see past an emotion and into another person’s soul. You do not judge or condemn. You align your personality with your soul and use the power of your heart.

Gary Zukav

 LINDA FRANCIS

Creating Authentic Power actually means I’m cultivating loving parts of my personality, the parts that appreciate life, the parts that experience joy, the parts that experience compassion.

 GARY ZUKAV

The heart of it all is love. Love. Living your life with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome. The intention is the quality of consciousness that infuses your actions. If it is an energy of fear, it will be an energy of needing to dominate, needing to control, needing to manipulate. That is
attachment to the outcome. If it is an energy of love, it will be the energy of care, of patience, of kindness, of consideration, of gratitude.

With Authentic Power, you can see everything that comes your way as a gift of sorts or a necessary lesson. You can accept that not every gift looks positive when you first receive it.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

—RUMI

Many difficulties or challenges—even illnesses and tragedies—have no apparent silver lining when they occur. But you can be grateful to be alive even in the face of a terrible loss and eventually come to terms with it. What do you still have in your life, in spite of your loss? Are you able to do good for others as a result of coming through a crisis?

 ECKHART TOLLE

No matter what you achieve outwardly in this world, you will always very quickly encounter frustration, disappointment, and some form of unhappiness or suffering, despite all your achievements, if you are not living in connectedness with that deepest level within yourself.